George Papadopoulos. Plus: Manafort suits up

I have time only for a brief post noting that which you surely already know: The George Papadopoulos guilty plea proves beyond all doubt that collusion took place.

The first big takeaway from Monday morning’s flurry of charging and plea documents with respect to Paul Manafort Jr., Richard Gates III and George Papadopoulos is this: The president of the United States had as his campaign chairman a man who had allegedly served for years as an unregistered foreign agent for a puppet government of Vladimir Putin, a man who was allegedly laundering remarkable sums of money even while running the now-president’s campaign, a man who allegedly lied about all of this to the FBI and the Justice Department.

The second big takeaway is even starker: A member of President Trump’s campaign team admits that he was working with people he knew to be tied to the Russian government to “arrange a meeting between the Campaign and the Russian government officials” and to obtain “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of hacked emails—and that he lied about these activities to the FBI. He briefed President Trump on at least some of them.

And yet Trump continues to deny, deny, deny:

“Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren't Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus?????” the president tweeted. Trump added: “Also, there is NO COLLUSION!”

Trump seems to have taken to heart that famous skit from A Guide For the Married Man, in which a wife catches her husband (Joey Bishop, if memory serves) in bed with another woman. The man denies the whole thing repeatedly and calmly, until his wife comes to doubt her own senses.

Rachel Maddow made a point which occurred to me earlier: The Manafort money laundering accusations focus on Ukrainian money, not the $60 million reportedly handed over to Manafort from Russian oligarchs (as per the WP). Also, toting up the amounts that Manafort spent money on does not even equal one third of the amount that he supposedly handled.

I was curious about Manafort's clothing.

You will recall that the agents who raided his home photographed his suits. They didn't do this to express their inner Barney Stinson; they did this because Manafort supposedly spent $1.3 million on clothing. GQ has the story, naturally: "That's a whole lot of ill-fitting suits." My point precisely! The guy never looked that good.

From the LAT:

In Beverly Hills’ ultra-luxury shopping district, it’s easy to get sticker shock. Still, some merchants expressed disbelief that someone could spend that kind of money on clothes in a four-year period.

Battistoni was founded in Rome in 1946 and has had a presence in Beverly Hills for decades. Sales associate Rogier Bolleurs, wearing a gray pinstripe double-breasted suit, said an outfit there costs from $3,000 to 7,000. Its clientele is mostly older titans of industry, he said.

It's possible that he really did spend that kind of money on vanity, but I'm starting to wonder if these retail outlets were also part of the laundering scheme.

It's known that he also spent money on art, even though he doesn't strike me as a particularly arty kind-o-guy. The art market has been used for laundering purposes before.